


Return Happy

by helloearthlings



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Depression, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 06:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11412552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: “Have you ever heard that old magical wives tale? They say that if you’re meant to love someone, you can see them if you concentrate your magic hard enough. Like a vision. A vision of your future together.”Merlin wasn’t sure if he believed Nimueh – even though his magic seemed to be guiding him, Merlin sometimes wondered if it was guiding him to love or off the side of a cliff.





	Return Happy

**Author's Note:**

> I basically sat down and MADE myself write today because it's the only day in two weeks that I have off. (Just worked for six, about to work for seven.) Fourth of July while working in a tourist town is the fucking worst - don't try it.
> 
> So this wasn't exactly something that was screaming to be written, but that I was screaming at most of the time instead. I feel a bit iffy about the build-up even though I like the concept a lot. Let me know what you think!

“What’s the matter?”

Merlin, nursing a pin and staring quite intently at the bottle of rum behind the bartender’s left ear without really seeing it, was broken from his reverie with an arm around his shoulder.

“Nim,” Merlin acknowledged his friend with tired smile that clearly said ‘I’m too much of a maudlin drunk to have a conversation right now’, but Nimueh had never really been one to pick up on subtle signals.

“You’re levitating that bottle, just so you know,” Nimueh pointed toward the bottle of rum, and now that Merlin noticed, it was actually hovering an inch or two above the counter top. He quickly stopped concentrating and let it fall to the counter with a shaky thud.

The bartender glared at him. Merlin smiled winningly back.

“You’re not in control of your own levitation abilities – tsk, tsk,” Nimueh bumped his shoulder with her own gently, knocking back her own drink, something of the lurid magenta variety. “Don’t tell me I need to get Gwaine over here to cheer you up.”

“Are he and Percival not necking in the corner?” Merlin jerked his head over to the corner booth that their friends had chosen to occupy for the evening instead of getting a bedroom like normal, non-exhibitionists. At this point in the evening, Gwaine had crawled into Percy’s lap and it looked like he was palming him through his jeans.

“Oh, please, you know that if he could see you sulking, he’d be over here in a heartbeat, orgasms be damned,” Nimueh laughed.

Merlin nodded, knowing that it was the truth, that he had good friends, great friends, fantastic friends. But that just made him feel worse about being maudlin. “And where’s Sefa? The two of you haven’t gotten yourselves a corner booth yet?”

Nimueh wrinkled her nose. “We’re a little more classy than that, dear. No, Sefa had to leave – she has an early shift tomorrow. I thought you were doing alright, but then Gwen and Elyan each found someone to go home with…and you’re still here. Pouting.”

“ _Not_ pouting,” Merlin said. “I just didn’t want to pull tonight, that’s all.”

Nimueh raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, her ruby lips pursed with distrust for Merlin’s word. “Why not?”

Merlin shrugged. “Just don’t see the point in it. And, like Sefa, I have an early shift tomorrow, so I better get going.”

“Wait right there, Mister,” Nimueh’s manicured fingernails dug into Merlin’s arm before he could escape. “When was the last time you pulled? Went on a date? ….Spoken to someone you’re attracted to?”

“I’m speaking to _you_ right now,” Merlin stuck his tongue out at her in a true display of wisdom and maturity, his medical degree put to use.

Nimueh, in true high fashion, did _not_ stick her tongue out back at him, but instead sighed pityingly. Merlin hated that. Pity was the worst of the emotions. He didn’t like feeling it, and he especially didn’t like other people feeling it for him.

He didn’t _need_ pity. He had his own medical practice. He was one of the world’s top three rankers in magical ability. He got drinks with good friends that he loved every Friday night.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with his life.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with my life,” Merlin told Nimueh, and when he said it out loud, he kind of believed it.

There was absolutely nothing –

“Maybe I’m a little lonely,” Merlin relented after a long period of sullen silence on his part and a piercing glare on Nimueh’s part. “But it’s only because my flat is so big and there’s no one to share it with me since Gwaine moved in with Percy. But it’s _fine_. I’m _fine._ I’m going to a conference in Istanbul next week to speak with some of the greatest thinkers on magical theory in the world! And they all want to meet _me_ , Nimueh. _Me._ I can deal with being a tad lonely once in a while when I’ve had too much to drink.”

Merlin was expecting some snappy, borderline angry retort from Nimueh, but her face relaxed into a sad smile as she put her hand on the back of Merlin’s neck in what she probably thought was a comforting manner. “C’mon, Merlin, the most powerful known sorcerer in Europe can’t even get a date?”

“I could get one,” Merlin pointed out stubbornly. “I don’t _want_ one. There’s a difference.”

“Why not?” Nimueh asked, and for a change, it wasn’t in a judgmental way, but in a curious one, like she cared about Merlin beyond his power. He and Nimueh had never been close; up until last year, she’d just been Sefa’s fuck buddy, but now as a girlfriend, she’d been slowly integrating herself into the group of friends. Merlin liked her because she had magic and he finally had someone to talk to about that, but Nimueh _really_ liked Merlin’s magic and what it could do and could be very irritating about seeing him use it.

But she kind of understood him in a way no one else did, which was…odd, but sometimes appreciated.

“I’m just too different,” Merlin shrugged, wondering why he was articulating this out loud but not being able to stop himself. “I have more power stored inside of me than any person I’m bound to meet and sometimes I don’t know how to keep it all there – inside. I think I scare people, intimidate them, and then I can’t bond with them. And I’ve gotten better at platonic bonds, I really have, but – romance is just too difficult for me. I feel like…”

Merlin hesitated, and then decided that if he was going to tell anyone, it might as well be Nimueh. “I feel like I’m waiting for someone. Every person that I meet, they’re not the one I’m waiting for. And I know it. My magic knows it. It stops me from getting too close because….it wants something, someone else.”

Nimueh was quiet for a moment before saying “Your magic is looking out for you. It’s smarter than you. It’s nudging you in the right direction, making sure you meet the people you’re meant to meet, love the people you’re meant to love. Trust it.”

“I do trust it,” Merlin said, not without irritation. “That’s why I’m not pulling tonight. My magic knows that no one here is who I’m looking for.”

Nimueh rapped her fingernails lightly against her glass, and then surprisingly, leaned her head against Merlin’s shoulder, the pressure of her head warm against his own. It felt nice. Gwaine used to platonically cuddle with him, but now he romantically cuddled with his boyfriend, and Merlin missed the contact.

“Have you ever heard that old magical wives tale?” Nimueh asked him, squeezing his hand. “They say that if you’re meant to love someone, you can see them if you concentrate your magic hard enough. Like a vision. A vision of your future together.”

“I thought only seers saw the future,” Merlin said, but Nimueh shook her head.

“I don’t know. It’s just a story, but….I think I saw Sefa. Before I met her. Just a flash of her – her hair, her laugh. I think I knew she was the one. I mean, not right away – it took time – but looking back, I think I always knew. You should try it. Your magic obviously wants you to find this person – let it see them. Maybe it’ll help with the loneliness, knowing that they’re out there.”

“Thanks, Nim,” Merlin leaned down to press a kiss to her head, not knowing how this odd bond between them came about but appreciating it all the same.

He wasn’t sure if he believed her – even though his magic seemed to be guiding him, Merlin sometimes wondered if it was guiding him to love or off the side of a cliff.

It couldn’t hurt to try, so during his walk home, he tried to follow the trail his magic had lain inside of his heart to its end, to envision what he thought – hoped – could be found at the end of the rainbow. He thought of how much love he had to give, how he wanted someone who would take all of his rampant energy, his aimless searching, and create a life with it, a life with him.

Til death to them part and all of the shit Merlin desperately wanted to believe in.

For hours that night, he stared at the ceiling until drifting into an uneasy sleep.

He awoke that morning without a face, without a voice, without the sound of a voice or a laugh or anything like that. But he had woken up feeling like he wasn’t alone – like there was someone next to him that if he just reached out to touch –

But he was still alone.

* * *

 

_“What are we doing on Saturday?”_

_“Mm…This Saturday or next?”_

_“This obviously. If I had meant next Saturday, I would have said next Saturday.”_

_“Ooh, pedantic, are we? Alright, this Saturday – according to my very existent color-coded schedule, I plan on doing fuck-all. Why? What do_ you _plan to do this Saturday?”_

_“…Well, I was thinking that I would take my boyfriend to see his mother. If he would like.”_

_“….Did you just invite yourself to meet my mother?”_

_“I want to meet her! You’ve been keeping her from me! I have to pretend that I’m best friends with her instead of actually being best friends with her, and it’s difficult!”_

_“Already assuming she’s gonna love you....Babe, you know she will. Don’t look so scared.”_

_“I just want to know for sure that she’ll love me so I don’t have to be nervous about it anymore.”_

_“Okay, weirdo – we can go see my mum.”_

Arthur woke up with his head pressing insistently into one of his many fluffy pillows, arms curled around it protectively, and was met with a rushing sense of disappointment that it was a pillow and not another human being.

Which was stupid, since he hadn’t pulled last night, he had just –

Had an odd dream. A vivid dream, where he had been sitting on a worn green and yellow checkered sofa that he didn’t own, curled up around another body with the television playing quietly in the background, and the man he’d had his arms around had been softly playing with Arthur’s hair, making the parts of it that stuck up smooth, and had the kind of laugh that went through his whole body, and Arthur loved, loved, loved –

He didn’t know anyone like that.

He would have written it off as a fluke, a byproduct of his lonely, workaholic lifestyle where his only friends were his cat and his sister, in that order.

But then the next night, he dreamed of the man again, of holding his calloused hand and walking past a kebob shop, arguing about where to go for dinner. Arthur had called the man an unwashed plebian and the man had shoved Arthur into the way of a small puddle on the road, it had just stormed, Arthur was worried about his car having hail damage–

And the next night, Arthur lying in bed peacefully, half-asleep, the sound of a shower running, the man’s voice asking him if he was still awake, pressing a kiss to his temple –

“Morgana,” Arthur brought up stiffly over their weekly lunch date. “What….what is it like, when you have a vision? I mean, what does it feel like?”

Morgana blinked at him, eyes getting wider by the second. “….Well, it’s not really an exact science. All seers experience visions in different ways. Because I get the feeling you’re not asking about me specifically.”

Arthur sat quietly and helplessly and his silence confirmed his sister’s suspicions, her eyebrows going up into her hairline.

“ _Arthur_?” She whispered, sounding very nearly scandalized. “Are you…are you having _visions?”_

“Maybe?” Arthur shrugged, not wanting to admit to it, and Morgana gasped, nearly jumping up from her seat. Arthur hoped she wouldn’t – the restaurant was rather crowded and he didn’t want to make a scene. “I mean, they’re just…I mean, I think they’re real. I think I _have_ to be seeing the future because they’re so…so vivid. So personal. But –”

“Tell me everything,” Morgana reached forward to squeeze Arthur’s hand, her silver rings biting into his skin. Morgana had had visions since she was thirteen, much to their father’s chagrin, but Morgana had learned how to control them, along with her potential for other magical powers, on her own, the epitome of a self-made woman in a magical age.

She’d be over the moon to hear that she and Arthur shared something so deep, so personal, but Arthur…

“I don’t have magic, though,” Arthur said, and knew he sounded a bit panicked over the ordeal. Which he had every right to be. Magic, though not nearly as taboo a subject as it had been thirty years ago, was still just on the edge of controversial, not a topic for mixed company. He had always been appreciative of magic – but he’d never _had_ magic. “How can I have visions if I don’t have magic? And they’re not – I mean, they’re all just of me with…with someone.”

“With someone,” Morgana repeated, eyes sparkling. “Like…”

“Like a boyfriend, or a husband,” Arthur sighed, pressing a hand to his aching forehead as Morgana gasped with delight. “I don’t know, they’re just so real but – _I don’t have magic_.”

Morgana nodded, seeming to realize that Arthur was not in the mood to dish but instead to have an existential crisis, and immediately took a pen out of her purse and scribbled down something from her phone.

“There’s a well-known doctor who lives here in London – young but extremely powerful,” Morgana said, still writing information down. “He specializes in magical difficulties and has no discrimination in his clientele. It would take you months to get an appointment, but he’s a friend of a friend. I’ll get an appointment set up for you.”

“Thank you,” Arthur said, sudden pressure off of his shoulders at the thought of an expert opinion. Morgana was a witch, but first and foremost a lawyer – she wouldn’t be able to tell him how to fix whatever this was.

And whatever it was, Arthur didn’t know if he wanted it to be fixed.

* * *

 

“Mr. …Pendragon,” Merlin regarded his new client with a polite smile as the man entered his office. Arthur Pendragon was tall, built, blond, and straight-backed, in clearly expensive clothes and shoes, but with a terrified expression on his face.

And up until this point, completely non-magical in every way.

“Doctor Emrys,” Arthur greeted him with a tight-lipped smile.

Merlin got up to shake his hand. The man had a firm grip even though his eyes were darting around as if looking for possible exits.

“I’ve been told that your sister is a good friend of my friend, Nimueh, and a very powerful seer,” Merlin did his best to smile comfortingly at the man, reminding him that he was nothing more than an average doctor at an average appointment, that magic was not something to fear.

“She is,” Arthur said, after a moment’s silence, and Merlin had to gesture at the chair in front of his desk to get the man to sit down.

“Now, I’ll have to admit, Nimueh gave me some information about you – Morgana seems to believe that you may also be a seer whose visions have only now started presenting?”

Arthur looked to be halfway on his way to nodding before slightly jerking his head to stop. “I don’t know – I, I’ve had what I think are visions when I sleep at night, but they could just be dreams. I’ve never had any magic before now, any at all,” he added quickly.

“And you still might not,” Merlin told him, smiling slightly, hoping that Arthur would let his guard down slightly – he’d need to if he wanted Merlin to help him. “First things first, we need to run a test for magical centers in your body. Everyone is born with a certain potential for magic, it just might always go untapped. I can run a very fast test to see how many centers your body has and how many of them have been opened. That will tell us whether or not you actually are a seer.”

Arthur hesitated before nodding slightly, and Merlin gestured to the table behind him for Arthur to lay down on.

“There’s not…any other preparation for this?” Arthur walked back to the table, leaning hesitantly over it as if he were scared it would bite him.

“I’m just going to touch your forehead,” Merlin said, “and I should get the information from there if there are no complications.”

Arthur visibly swallowed before quickly laying down, and Merlin could see his hand tremoring slightly.

“Does magic scare you, Arthur?” Merlin asked quietly, not wanting to move on without addressing the extremely apparently uncomfortable behavior of Arthur. He had come across people both scared of magic and hateful of magic in his life, though none of them had ever come in for an appointment with a magical doctor before.

“Not yours,” Arthur said quickly, the tremor stopping but with no less anxiety in his eyes. “I don’t want you to think that I – that I’m a bigot or something. I’m not. My sister has magic, I have friends with magic, I just – I just remember when my sister first got her visions, she’d scream and scream, every night, sobbing, and I couldn’t wake her. She saw…she saw war zones and people dying and blood and gore. I don’t – I don’t want to see that.”

“Is that what your visions are?” Merlin said quietly, beginning to understand. Morgana Pendragon was known, at least in magical circles, to be the most powerful seer in England if not Europe, and the more power someone had, the more susceptible they were to seeing, experiencing, or causing violence. It didn’t mean that magic users were inherently violent – they just had much more potential to both cause and experience harm.

Arthur shook his head and for the first time, a slight smile appeared. “No, they’re…they’re soft. Quiet. I just don’t want them to turn into…”

“I understand,” Merlin said quietly, remembering what it was like to fifteen, to have blown a hall in the wall of his school gym and have the media and gossips crawling all over him, calling him a danger to society. Of moving to London and realizing that his lifelong secret didn’t have to be a secret anymore, that he could channel it to help people, make their lives better. He remembered getting to the place he was today, and the idea of going back terrified him.

Arthur wasn’t a teenager, wasn’t a little kid – he was a grown man who shouldn’t have to experience the fear of adolescent magic, but was anyway.

“I’m just going to press my hand against your forehead,” Merlin told him, moving a step closer. “This shouldn’t take more than a minute.”

Concentrating just enough, Merlin pressed his palm gently between Arthur’s eyes.

He could feel the blood pumping in Arthur’s veins as he stared down at Arthur’s body and yet not Arthur’s body, the skin and bones and blood no longer there, but merely the shape of him, the beating of  his heart, the pulsing of soul just under Merlin’s fingertips.

If Merlin wanted to, he had the power to delve into that soul, to see what made Arthur tick, see his greatest fears and reckless impulses, his wishes and desires, see how he loved, how he lost, how he felt pain.

Merlin just had a finger there, but already he knew how beautiful it would be.

He was tempted, for the first time in a long time, to delve deeper – but he never would, instead letting his eyes zoom through Arthur’s veins, see the places where magic sparkled, just slightly, just enough to suggest a cause.

Merlin took his palm away and it all faded into obscurity, Arthur gasping from beneath him.

“Are you alright?” Merlin moved his hand to Arthur’s shoulder as Arthur stared up at him in what seemed to be disbelief.

“That was…” Arthur trailed off, eyes wide.

“It feels as if you’re just a soul and not a body,” Merlin filled in with a slight smile. “Everyone with magic has these done once every few years to update the statistics on how much power magical beings can hold. I’ve good some good news for you – none of your centers have been tapped. That doesn’t mean that you’re not having visions of the future, but it does mean that you aren’t a seer.”

Arthur’s forehead creased as he sat up, biting his lip in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“You have about eight different centers for potential magic,” Merlin grabbed his clipboard from the table to scribble that down. “Most non-magical people have five, so you’re slightly above average – but none of them have been used. The average sorcerer has fifteen, six of which are in use, although those numbers vary slightly every year.”

“Okay, so I’m not producing the magic,” Arthur said slowly, “but how can they still be visions?”

Merlin shrugged. “I’ll have to run more tests, but it could be a lot of things. It could be an influx of influence from your sister, for instance, or a transfer of power from someone else. Someone could be projecting it onto you, trying to make you see things. All I know that is that it’s not _your_ magic. That doesn’t make it dangerous,” Merlin added quickly, seeing Arthur’s eyes widen, “it could be voluntary or accidental.”

“Okay,” Arthur said slowly. “But…it could be dangerous?”

“We just don’t know yet,” Merlin told him, knowing it wasn’t good enough. He needed to do more research on this subject, it was such an odd situation, but he couldn’t let Arthur out of here without giving him some form of comfort. “Did your sister take medication for visions? Back when she was a teenager and couldn’t control them?”

Arthur shook his head, wincing. “My father…didn’t believe in that sort of thing. Said it would corrupt her more than the magic already had.”

Merlin felt a spike of revulsion on behalf of Morgana as he picked up a prescription pad. “Well, there’s a drug that many young seers take that’s meant to quiet down their magic centers and the images that they create. It may or may not work for you, since the centers in use aren’t yours, but they should at least keep the visions quiet and not make them any worse. I want to schedule an appointment with your for next week so I can research some different causes and effects of non-magical peoples having visions and what I can do to help with them.”

Arthur nodded, taking the prescription that Merlin held out. “Thank you, Doctor Emrys.  I really appreciate this.”

“It’s what I do,” Merlin smiled at Arthur as he left to speak with one of the nurses about the pharmacy.

Merlin hoped that no one was trying to cause Arthur harm with these visions – if the drug didn’t help Arthur at all this week, he’d have to ask what Arthur’s visions were about. It was a taboo subject among seers, asking for information about their visions, but Merlin was a medical professional and Arthur was _not_ a seer, so the code of conduct wouldn’t apply.

Hopefully, the drug did the trick, but Merlin didn’t want Arthur dependent on drugs either, not when he would never be able to control the magic that someone else had put inside of him.

It was a very helpless feeling, Merlin knew all too well, when there was something about yourself that you couldn’t control.

* * *

 

Morgana had verified that the pills were legitimate, that she knew multiple seers who had taken them in their adolescence and they had helped them control their visions before they had been properly trained in the magical arts.

But Arthur wasn’t a seer, at least according to Emrys, so he wasn’t sure what good they would do.

And would stopping the visions really be _good_?

Even though the thought of someone projecting visions into his head scared him slightly, there was nothing horrible or malignant about what he was seeing. He was seeing himself in love. He was seeing a man who loved him, who took care of him, who laughed at his jokes and woke him up in the mornings.

Unless this was some cruel prank, someone trying to make him think there was a person out there waiting for him, the visions gave Arthur comfort.

Especially now that he knew that he wasn’t producing them; that they would never advance into bloodshed, that he wouldn’t have to learn how to control them, that he would not be counted among the magic users in the next census.

He threw up the first pill that he took and forced himself to take another one.

_“Are you ready to go yet?”_

_“Give me five minutes.”_

_“Arthur, seriously, you look fine.”_

_“It’s our engagement party! I want_ someone _there to think I’m the attractive one in the relationship.”_

 _“…._ I _think that you’re the attractive one. As does everyone else. Because they have eyes.”_

_“And with them, they see that my fiancé is startlingly out of my league.”_

_“You’re a flatterer. A flatterer who is going to make us late to our own party. Gwen and Morgana will be very cross – they’ve spent all month planning.”_

_“I’m coming, I’m coming. I don’t want Morgana castrating me before I can get married, after all.”_

“Do you know anyone named Gwen?” Arthur asked Morgana on the phone the next day.

“I don’t think so – why?”

“It’s nothing,” Arthur said softly, somewhat relieved that the drugs hadn’t taken away the comfort that the visions brought.

He kept having visions throughout the week, though he could tell a slight difference – they were less vivid, he could really only hear the voices, feel the man’s touch on his skin. Not quite as vivid, a little more muted. He couldn’t see the man’s face clearly – he couldn’t to begin with, but it felt even more obstructed from his view.

He told Doctor Emrys about the lack of vividness during their appointment the next week. The doctor frowned at him, writing down his answers on his notepad.

Arthur liked Emrys; he was clearly smart and capable, but it was hard to believe that a man who looked no older than Arthur was one of the most revered magical doctors in the country. Arthur had looked him up before their first appointment; apparently, Merlin Emrys was the record-holder for most used magical centers in the human body at 118 and had graduated medical school by age 24, saving dozens of lives since then and being the first doctor in London to offer comprehensive treatment for magical problems that was non-discriminatory in clientele.

Arthur had always thought _he_ was impressive with his advanced law degree and number of cases won, but he was rethinking that now.

“Arthur…May I call you Arthur?” Emrys looked up from his writing to blink at Arthur through his thick-rimmed glasses.

“If I can call you Merlin,” Arthur said, a bit jokingly, but Emrys just nodded and smiled. That was another thing about Emrys – well, Merlin – he didn’t have a big head about being the greatest thing to happen to magic since Gandalf.

“Arthur, I need to ask what your visions are about. I’m sure that Morgana has told you that seers generally do not share that information with one another, but as you are not a seer and seeing as how I am completely confidential, I really do need that information to make sure that these visions are not coming from a malignant source.”

Arthur bit his lip, knowing that he could trust his doctor but actually a bit embarrassed over the fact that these visions were all of his future husband. Well, hopefully future husband. It was a little too private to express, but again…Merlin was a doctor…

“They’re all…” Arthur shrugged a little helplessly. “…of the same man. With me. We’re…together.”

Merlin blinked a couple of times but then his eyes widened in understanding. “Okay, okay. Is this…I mean, is this…something you…expected?”

It took Arthur a second to understand that question, but then laughed as it came to him. “You’re asking if I knew I liked men? Yeah, I was aware of that one.”

Merlin relaxed visibly, hiding a smile. “Just wanted to make sure. That’s a good thing, that the visions aren’t of anything harmful. Do you…I mean…” He hesitated, not meeting Arthur’s eye. “Do you enjoy the visions?”

“…yes,” Arthur confessed, eyes hitting the floor, having not even said as much to Morgana. “I…It feels like there’s someone out there. Waiting for me. I was always so…”

He trailed off, uncomfortable, but Merlin’s look was not judgmental, but thoughtful as he considered him. “I know what you mean. I tried…I mean, it’s stupid,” Merlin laughed, his hand twitching slightly. “There’s this old wives tale that if you concentrate hard enough, you might be able to see the person you have a future with, whether you’re a seer or not.”

He stopped short, then stared at Arthur. Arthur jerked his head up in surprise.

“That’s it,” Merlin said slowly, a smile appearing on his face. “You…I mean, either you have enough latent magic within you to produce these visions, or this man you keep seeing has magic, and his visions are strong enough that you’re having them too.”

“Do you – do you really think that’s it?” Arthur said, his heart racing at the possibility.

“I mean, I’ll run the tests I was going to anyway – just to make sure that the visions aren’t going to cause you any harm or impairment,” Merlin’s smile was a thousand watt bulb. “But I’m certain that’s it – the cure to stopping the visions is just to find your person, Arthur.”

Arthur couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

* * *

 

Merlin was nursing his pint at the Rising Sun. Gwaine and Percival were necking the corner. Sefa had an early shift the next morning and had begged off early. Elyan was currently chatting up a brunette at the end of the bar, Gwen was with her new girlfriend –

And Merlin was being a maudlin drunk again.

God, he was never going to find someone.

He couldn’t feel the path he was on, not anymore. His magic had seemed to stop him short a few weeks ago and plant him firmly within the ground, within the moment. Merlin felt like molasses; stagnating in a swampy pit, darkness surrounding him.

He just wanted to stop being alone.

“Merlin?”

Merlin turned around at the sound of his name to see Arthur Pendragon, smiling slightly at him with a hand raised in greeting. One on side of him was a dark-haired woman with high cheekbones and a pristine suit, and on the other was Nimueh, looking as pleased and devious as ever.

“Arthur,” Merlin smiled in spite of himself, standing up to take the other man’s hand. If he was honest with himself, the ordeal with Arthur had made him feel even worse about himself. Of course, he was thrilled for Arthur – to have someone waiting for you was a wonderful thing that he clearly deserved – but it served as a reminder to Merlin that the method of wishing for something worked for someone else, but would never work for him.

“This is my sister, Morgana,” Arthur introduced the other woman, whose hand Merlin also took. She crooked her head at him and turned to Nimueh with a grin. They seemed quite similar to one another, both in appearance and sinister looks.

“Pleasure,” Morgana said, voice dripping with class. “Thank you for helping Arthur with his…well, problem isn’t the right word for it, is it?”

She and Nimueh laughed while Merlin jerked his head toward the bar. “C’mere, Arthur – I’ll buy you a drink.”

The two of them sat together in companionable silence as the bartender poured Arthur a gin and tonic.

“Still having the visions?” Merlin asked, a bit more conversationally than he would have at work.

Arthur nodded. “I stopped taking the drugs to see if I could figure out who he was – a name, a face – nothing definitive yet. But I know that I would know him if I saw him. I just know it.”

“That’s great, Arthur,” Merlin said, and meant it. “I’m happy for you.”

Arthur looked at him curiously for a moment, expression open. “Have you ever tried it? Having a vision about…about someone?”

Merlin laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, I tried it. Didn’t really do anything. I felt…I mean, I felt _something_. But since around that time, my magic has decided that it’s done leading me toward something. I don’t think there’s anyone out there waiting for me – not like there is for you. So enjoy it, yeah?”

Arthur’s expression was oddly sad, and Merlin didn’t know why. It wasn’t like they were friends; God, if there was anything Merlin hated more than pity from his friends it was pity from strangers.

“Maybe you’ve already found them,” Arthur said quietly after a moment. “Or maybe your magic thinks you can do it on your own.”

“Well then, my magic has a lot more faith in me than I do,” Merlin said with a laugh. “Don’t worry about me, Arthur – worry about finding your person.”

“Believe me, I am,” Arthur said with a roll of his eyes. “I still suspect this is some elaborate and awful joke Morgana is pulling on me. I never thought…I mean, I’ve always…I never thought there would be someone for me. And I keep looking for him everywhere – in every face I see, I keep hoping it’s him.”

“You’ll find him,” Merlin patted Arthur’s shoulder clumsily. “I know you will. You don’t get visions like that unless…unless the person really _wants_ you. I could reach out, if you wanted? I run in a lot of magical circles, I could keep my eyes open for someone who has the power and the desire to…”

Arthur’s eyes lit up. “Would you? Please? That would be amazing. I mean, you don’t have to, you’ve already helped so much –”

“I’d be happy to,” Merlin assured Arthur with a squeeze of his shoulder. The least he could do was help someone else – that was what he did, after all. That was clearly what he was meant to do – not love a person, but to help people. That would be enough for him.

“From my doctor to my matchmaker,” Arthur laughed delightedly and Merlin couldn’t help but join him.

* * *

 

“Again, I’m so sorry about Cenred, I had no idea he was such a creep – I’ll find a way to kick up off the Municipal Magic Board, I swear –”

“Merlin, it’s fine,” Arthur laughed into the end of his phone receiver, pressed between his ear and his shoulder as he sliced up the tomatoes for the spaghetti sauce that was simmering behind him on the stovetop. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. Anyway, Mordred’s coming over for dinner tonight. He wanted to stay in, so I already feel better about him than the others.”

“Mordred’s a sweet guy, I helped him out of a legal bind a few years back,” Merlin’s voice crackled over the phone. “If nothing else, he’ll be good company.”

“I feel good about this one, I really do,” Arthur told Merlin excitedly. The first few men Merlin had set him up with had been decent, but they didn’t have the spark, the fire, the _laughter_ of the man in his dreams, so distinct and lovely. He had talked to Mordred over the phone yesterday and could almost see it, though.

“Let me know how it goes,” Merlin said. “I can expand my search outside of London, but that narrows it too – not many people would have the talents to project over that much of a space.”

“Could you?” Arthur asked before he could stop himself. “If you tried?”

The line was quiet for a moment before Merlin said “If I tried, yeah. Not sure about subconsciously. No one…no one really has me beat, in the raw power sector. Anyone I look for will be less powerful than I am.”

“I suppose we should all be very grateful that you want to be a doctor and not an emperor,” Arthur said quietly after a moment, as he sometimes forgot that Merlin and his horn-rimmed glasses and overlarge ears could blow over buildings if he so desired.

“Uh, have a good night,” Merlin said, obviously a bit uncomfortable, and Arthur didn’t blame him.

Arthur liked Merlin and appreciated all that he was doing for Arthur, the way he seemed to care, in both a humanitarian and a personal way, about everyone that he came across, Arthur especially. No one had ever given Arthur attention like Merlin had before – Morgana was always careful not to boost his ego, and his father had veered on the neglectful side throughout his youth.

But Merlin really seemed to care about him, even though it was painfully obvious that Merlin was jealous of him, jealous that he had someone like this. Arthur wished he could return the favor and find someone to set Merlin up with sometime.

And he would – just as soon as he could stop thinking about the man who lived in his head and get the man in his life.

Last night, he had dreamed of them smearing frosting on each other from a failed birthday cake because his future husband couldn’t bake for shit. All Arthur could remember doing was laughing – laughing, laughing, and laughing, joy thrumming throughout his entire body.

Mordred showed up an hour later, and Arthur knew immediately that he wasn’t the one. There was no spark. His laugh was short and quick, not at all like the man he dreamed of.

“I’m sorry,” Mordred shook Arthur’s hand sympathetically. He really was cute, and charming – Arthur wished it could have been him. “Maybe I can help, though – I’m an empath Druid. I specialize in feelings. If you let me in your head…I could tell you more about him, at least.”

“I would really appreciate that,” Arthur said honestly, and Mordred, smiling hesitantly, cupped his hand around Arthur’s cheek.

A hot flash went through Arthur’s body and he staggered backward slightly, but Mordred’s hand kept him in place.

“ _Oh_ …” Mordred murmured, eyes still closed, fingers brushing the ends of Arthur’s hair. “You yearn for one another. Desperately, your whole lives, even when you didn’t know it. So lonely…you and him. You with your distant father and sister with a divide between you so deep, could never make friends, could never get close…And him, hiding his magic until he was sixteen….always alone as a child…keep it secret, keep it safe, his mother told him every night and he could never get close, not until he left home...”

Arthur swayed backward, eating up the information, hearing it and knowing that it was true without having to think.

“…All he wants to do is help…” Mordred continued on, as if in a trance, “…help those who can’t help themselves. Because no one should have suffer….no one should be pain…but he’s in pain every day, because he thinks that no one is out there, no one is waiting for him….”

That woke Arthur, just slightly, just enough, because Merlin had said the same.

“Merlin…” A slight smile appeared on Mordred’s lips. “Merlin’s always wanted to love someone but has never been able to. Because he’s been waiting for Arthur. He could never love anyone but Arthur. Their souls…your souls…were knitted together with stardust. You don’t know it….neither does he…but it’s the truest thing either of you will ever have….”

Mordred suddenly jerked his hand backward as Arthur’s heart stopped in his chest.

“What…what did you just say?” Arthur whispered harshly. Merlin – God, Merlin – he hadn’t thought…hadn’t considered….but if it was _Merlin_ …

Mordred blinked at him. “Did I say something? I can’t remember. Bit of a side effect of magic like that. I don’t remember any specifics, but I remember reaching it to touch the man in your head. He had a good energy. I think he’s looking for you, too – and he really wants to love you.”

“You – you said it was Merlin,” Arthur said, staring, waiting for a reaction.

Mordred smiled. “It did feel like Merlin, now that you mention it. But don’t you think you would’ve known it was him?”

“Not if I’m the most fucking unobservant person in the entire _world_ ,” Arthur breathed, because it suddenly made sense, all of it – the most powerful sorcerer in the world didn’t believe that he had someone to love, so his visions went to the person who was meant to love him instead. And Arthur had been too obtuse and blind to see –

“His home address, do you have his home address?” Arthur asked frantically, heart going a mile a minute, and Mordred quickly wrote it down for him, a smile growing on his face.

“Good luck!” Mordred called to him as Arthur raced down the stairs of his own apartment building.

* * *

 

Merlin had been idly flicking through channels while hanging upside down over the couch, making both himself and the television float, when there was a frantic knock on the door.

Surprised, both Merlin and the TV fell to the floor with a thud. The knocking became more insistent as Merlin groaned, massaging his soon-to-be-bruised shoulder.

“Just a _second!”_ He snapped irritably, cracking his neck, sparing a glance for his poor television set but knowing he could set it right later with copious amounts of magic and probably booze to get through the ordeal.

He opened the door, more than a little pissed at whoever had interrupted his very important activities, but that melted away when he saw that it was Arthur, staring him down with huge blue eyes, breathing heavily as if he’d just run a marathon.

“Hey,” Merlin said, anger deflating entirely, “how’d your date –?”

“It’s you,” Arthur said quietly, breathlessly. “It’s you, Mordred – Mordred wasn’t the right guy because the right guy is _you_.”

“What – what are you talking about?” Merlin very nearly shuddered, not wanting his hopes to be drawn out like this. Arthur couldn’t possibly mean – “You said that you’d…that you’d know him when you saw him, Arthur. I can’t be…”

“Mordred looked in my head and he said your name,” Arthur put a hand out as if to take Merlin’s before drawing it back, nervously, apologetically. “And I realized…it’s been you this whole time, I just didn’t know how to look properly at what was in front of me. I…I kept having visions, not because you hadn’t found me, but because you _believed_ you hadn’t. You were still…so lonely.”

Arthur stepped forward, and Merlin almost took his hand himself, but stopped himself because – well, this was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Some half-baked fantasy, some wish upon a dream.

“Arthur, I can’t – I can’t be the man in your head, I’m just –” Merlin started and couldn’t finish.

“Please be the man in my head, then,” Arthur said, trying his best to smile but he looked so confused, so vulnerable, so _hopeful._ “I…I want it to be you. You – you already know me. Understand me. Help me. No one’s ever…it has to be you, Merlin. It’s the only way it makes sense.”

“It doesn’t make any sense no matter what,” Merlin whispered, trying to wrap his around the fact that someone he cared about didn’t just care about him, too, but that they were meant for one another. It was just too much.

But when he pulled Arthur into a hesitant hug and felt the noise of his head quiet down, he could feel it.

“It makes sense like…like stars make sense,” Arthur muttered into Merlin’s shoulder and Merlin somehow understood what he meant.

“We can try,” Merlin told him. “I – I won’t be good at this. I always believed I’d be alone.”

“That’s okay,” Arthur said, and Merlin could tell he was smiling even though he couldn’t see him. “I didn’t believe I’d find someone either.”

Merlin laughed in spite of himself, not knowing what else to do with the relief and affection that swept through his body, at the luck that he was given. He still wasn’t sure he believed in whatever this was but – he believed Arthur was genuine. That he wanted to try.

“That’s the laugh I hear in my dreams every night,” Arthur pulled away with a surprised and delighted look in his eye. “The one I loved so much. What I kept looking for. I’d never heard you laugh like that until…”

Merlin bit his lip, staring at the ground, a bit abashed. “I guess it’s your laugh, then. Only for you.”

* * *

 

Arthur rolled over on top of Merlin to wake him up, his eyes wrinkled with sleep, little bits of crust in the corners that Arthur desperately wanted to be the one to wipe away.

“I didn’t dream about anything last night,” Arthur told him and was rewarded with Merlin’s sleepy smile. “’Cause you’re already here.”

“Placebo effect,” Merlin muttered, though lovingly, and Arthur desperately hoped that someday he’d convince Merlin that this was all the way it was supposed to happen.

He didn’t have long to wait, though, because Merlin added “I dreamt there was someone lying next to me. And when I reached out to touch, it was you. And you didn’t disappear.”

“Told you so,” Arthur told him, burying his head in Merlin’s shoulder, not just knowing that they’d have many more moments like this to come, but knowing the exact timber of their voices, the feel of their bodies moving together, the way they’d laugh.


End file.
